Presidents in Taiwan

Greetings from Taiwan,

It’s been a while since our last newsletter so it is wonderful to connect with you again. We have some exciting updates to share from our journey and some future plans.

Trip Back Home:

Reflecting on our recent trip back home, it was such a refreshing time full of joy and love filled moments reconnecting with our friends and family. We feel totally reenergized and our hearts are full from our time there but we are also excited to be back in Taiwan where our love for the people here is growing even more.

(Sorry if you’re not in the pictures, we still love you!)

YWAM National Staff Conference:

When we returned to Taiwan, after recovering from sickness, we were blessed to join our yearly YWAM National Staff Conference. The conference is a gathering of YWAMers committed to making God known in Taiwan, and it further ignited our passion for the mission that we are a part of. It was amazing to visit with people that we haven’t seen for a long time, worship and pray together, and press in to the calling that God has given us as a corporate body. One thing that we all felt God was speaking clearly is the need to focus on reaching more youth here not only in churches around Taiwan but also in schools and tribes.

YWAM Taiwan is becoming a location with more and more people over 30 which is having an impact on the spheres that we are able to reach. We are praying for more of the young generation to be equipped to bring Jesus to the nation. In order to do that, they first need to be discipled, and DTS is a great way to do that.We believe that through investing in the younger generation, it will create a ripple effect, where God will use them to transform families, communities and the nation.

Meeting with Paiwan Tribe:

With the above being said, a significant highlight in the last couple weeks (right after our national conference) was our meeting with the Paiwan tribe a couple hours south of us. A random (not random) encounter with one of the leaders of the tribe gave us an opportunity to serve their tribe. Four of their leaders asked us if we would be willing to go there on a semi-regular basis to run some camps, Bible studies, and preach the gospel to the youth of their tribe which has hundreds of youth!

We have an outreach team from Montana coming for a month, so we will be taking them to the tribe with us to run some events for December. We are praying this will help us establish a strong relationship with the tribe going forward. This is a huge and almost immediate answer to prayer.

Sharing at High School:

We also had the joy of teaching a Thanksgiving English class at a public high school near us where we were allowed to introduce YWAM and talk about Jesus along with Thanksgiving.

It’s opportunities like these that confirm that we heard God right and He is leading us to the right people and places.

New Team Members:

We have been praying for a long time that God would send us more people to join our team long term and it seems that His timing is now. We just had one new friend from Malaysia join our team as of the beginning of December. She speaks Chinese fluently which helps when we struggle to articulate difficult topics. We are blessed to have Jeanette with us, but that is not all! A younger couple who we used to work with has shared that they are also planning to move back here and join our team! (Probably, but not definite yet)

This is almost doubling our team size in just a few months so we are praising God for this!

(Team picture coming soon)

Upcoming Church Plant:

A while back, we shared in a newsletter about a big new ministry that we were preparing for but I didn’t want to share any details at that time because it was still so early.

While it is still early, we have made a lot of progress in terms of planning, and we feel that it is the right time to share some of those details.

Over the next year and a bit, we will be preparing for our first bilingual house church plant! (Which will also be the first bilingual church in our city)

We have enough space in our house to fit about 40 chairs if we use the space fully.

Preparations will include a few renovations to the house, buying equipment needed, finding the right people to help with running the church (already found some), and thinking through a number of other details.

So we do need help. And we need prayer. We need God’s hand to be on this and we believe He is the driving force behind it.

One thing that is important to note is that this is not going to replace our community nights but instead it will be an addition to our community nights and the church will happen on Sunday afternoons. (Not during the same time as other churches)

We hope that this can be a way for people to be introduced to Jesus and hear accurate Biblical messages while having a loving community to grow with, pray with and then take the gospel out to their community.

Then if they are more comfortable at an all Chinese speaking church for whatever reason, we want to encourage them to get plugged into their local community and church to keep growing toward Jesus in whatever way is more effective for them to grow and understand.

As we move forward on this journey of a new house church plant, we are trusting in God’s provision for both financial resources and committed people to join us. Your support, both in prayer and potentially in partnering with us financially, is invaluable. We appreciate you and how you have been consistently encouraging us to share God’s word here.

If you’d like to help support this church plant in any way, please feel free to email us directly.

Also if you have any questions you’d like to know about for clarification or any other reason, don’t hesitate to ask, go ahead and be direct. We are open and happy to answer.

With that, if you have any personal wisdom to share that you feel could help us in this process, please also share with us!

-Most recent community night picture-

Christmas is coming soon!

We pray that this Christmas season is filled with joy, love, and deep rest that comes from Jesus. Thank you for being part of our journey; you mean the world to us.